Do you ever feel stuck or limited by negativity? There’s a powerful antidote: cultivating a possibility mindset, where you see challenges as opportunities for growth and success. In this episode, Darrin Tulley features Dr. Lynda Ulrich, author of Happiness is an Option and founder of Goodness Exchange and its Conspiracy of Goodness Podcast. Dr. Lynda discusses the importance of positivity and maintaining a possibility mindset even in challenging times. Through personal anecdotes and insights, she illustrates how shifting from contempt to curiosity can lead to meaningful connections and foster empathy, transforming individual perspectives and promoting a more hopeful worldview.
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Through The Lens Of Possibilities: Reframing Your Worldview Featuring Dr. Lynda Ulrich
Introduction
I had the most delightful conversation with Dr. Lynda Ulrich. Don’t miss out on this free boost of goodness and kindness to spark more joy in your everyday. Dr. Lynda joins us as a Dentist turned social innovator for good. She’s the author of her book titled Happiness is an Option. She’s a three-time TEDx speaker, a world-renowned keynote speaker, show host about the Conspiracy of Goodness, and she started what I believe was the first positive media outlet where she shares positive news for curious people. Dr. Lynda makes most people feel like anything is possible, where her work proves unequivocally that it is still an amazing world and inspires us to go discover our role in it. Sprinkle in some wonderment and open your door to transcendent joy. Enjoy the show.
Dr. Lynda, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
I am so glad to be here. You’re using one of my favorite words, possibility.
I’m excited you’re here too because we have so many fun things to cover. I think about you, you’re a breath of fresh air. What’s good for the world?
That’s kind of you. Life circumstances have played out for me, too. That includes ups and tremendous downs. One thing I was good at was following the next breadcrumb to something regarding possibility. I feel like I’m standing in a wind with catcher’s mitts on my hands. There’s a wind of opportunity coming out, and trying to not let anything get by.
I love that visual. You are someone that’s very curious. You’re very positive and helping people to see the world a little bit differently. You’re showing it already, little bits and pieces living with wonder. We met from a mutual friend, Sarah Leathers. I’m curious how you two met. Are you staying in touch with her?
We wrote an article together for her organization, Healing Meals, doing amazing work. We wrote an article for the big mother website, the Goodness Exchange, about her. There’s a wonderful video about Healing Meals and so forth. My social media person was so impressed by how cool and nice Sarah was. She said, “You should just call her and get her on the show.” I did, and we have become fast friends. We meet. We are on each other’s calendar every single Friday morning at 8:00, whether we are able to meet or not. Sometimes we have to postpone on each other, but we have been doing that for maybe two years or three.
You both are two of the most optimistic people I think I’ve ever met. Looking at what’s out in the world and seeing what’s possible. As you said, making those ripples or putting those little crumbs out there to follow.
She’s amazing. Check out her episode. She is something.
What do you talk about?
We’re about the same age and stage. We both are businesswomen and professionals. She’s an engineer by background. Did you know that? She has a huge education. We go through the ups and downs in our lives. Here’s the number one thing we do, books. It’s hilarious how she and I and another person that I meet weekly will say to one another, “I’m reading the greatest book,” then we’ll both hold up the sign.
We share books and shows. That’s how I know about you. She adores your show. She one day said, “You have got to meet Darrin Tulley.” He would be such a great guest for you. There are some people in this universe I’ve never met personally. This digital meeting doesn’t seem to matter. It feels like I can reach through the internet and hug her. If I did spend time with her in person, I don’t know if it would make a difference. We just adore each other.
That’s wonderful. I think you’re both folks that see the world a little bit differently and you’re connecting in a powerful way. It’s incredible about the people we hang around with and how it impacts our lives and keeps us looking at life a certain way. Maybe it’s something we’ve read in a book or a show or just an experience. How do I get through this? Maybe we’re there to encourage each other. She’s one of those people, like yourself.
I’ve got your book sitting right here by me because I interviewed you. One of the things that I talked about in my interview with you was finding a partner or finding people to partner with. Sarah is one of those people. I wrote a blog post for our newsletter the other day about how important it is to find somebody who’s outside your world. Not a co-worker. Not somebody in your family, but somebody who comes from a different place entirely than Sarah and I do.
If you drive, make the time for those relationships, is my point. We don’t. We say, “Sometimes we should catch up,” but you never do. If you put it on your calendar that you’re meeting several others or Arthur Zards every single week, you will have a rich and expanded life. I do tell people to find those people outside their normal life. Enjoy being out on the edges with them.
Find people outside your normal life and enjoy being out on the edges with them. Share on XPassion And Work
I love that, too. I’ll tell you, I had a conversation with a good friend recently. I needed a pick-me-up and it did. It allowed me to see, like, “I’m excited about talking to Dr. Lynda. She gets the world in a different way, and she gets it like the way you see it too.” It’s good. It keeps our eyes open. It keeps us pushing and expanding the world a little bit differently. We all have our day-to-day. We’re all doing things that are part of our routines, our jobs, and how we live. I’d love to go there next, Dr. Lynda. Tell us a little bit about what your day-to-day looks like. What are you passionate about these days?
I’ve been a dentist for several years. About 25 years in 2013, I started to notice. My husband and I are both dentists. We have this practice together. We go through conversation over conversation. It’s 30 conversations a day. We started noticing that people who we’d otherwise noticed chipper their whole lives, the negative noise in the media and social media negativity was starting to beat people down. I snapped a couple of good stories that are the a-ha moments or the stories of the Goodness Exchange.
About many years ago, I decided that I was going to do something with the world, one thing a day, to prove it’s still an amazing world every day. That’s what I started out doing, it was writing an article. I’m pretty well read and I’ve traveled all over the world. I knew folks were never going to see the beauty and wonder that I’d seen in some pretty bleak places. We’ve traveled with purpose all our lives, and the generosity of people who don’t have very much. The ingenuity and the way they think of doing things. It’s so inspiring, but that’s not what we’re going to hear in the negative noise on the media.
What fires me up is the constant and building volume of stuff that we have to choose from every day to put on the Goodness Exchange or the people I’m interviewing. I remember when we had about 30 topics ahead of us way back in the original days. We thought we’d just run out of the good things to talk about. that 30 became 300, and then we were like, “How do we choose what to shine a light on?”
Now I have to have the world’s largest to-do list that I have to meticulously keep track of everybody I want to interview or write something about or contact. What I’m passionate about right now is sharing this notion that there is an enormous wave of goodness and progress happening, and almost no one knows enough about it yet.
You were at a point where you were thinking at 30, “We’re done.” That’s scary to think about. We’re done with that much goodness and positivity in the world. That goodness, you found 300, and now it’s getting even bigger. You said the word “yet.” Tell us more.
Here’s the thing. One of the things that I’ve learned on this crazy journey is that you will find what you look for. If you’re very upset about the politics over time and you look for the badness in others, you will find it. You will find it. But if you are hoping that the world is much better than it seems and you look for it, you will find that too. One excuse after another. I tell people to make sure they make time in their day for that mental health exercise, ten minutes a day.
There are all kinds of studies that four minutes of good news makes you 18% less fearful and 32% more optimistic. These are Harvard studies, like real numbers and real volumes of test subjects. It’s a message we’re not hearing enough of. I’ve mentioned before, I feel like the town crier that we’ve got to start looking for it, and you will see what a wonderful place the world still is, but you’ve got to look for it first.
You do have to look for it. You have to want to look for it and have that level of interest to slow down and notice it, too. I talked to some news stations and I said, “All you guys talk about is negativity and we need to sprinkle in some positivity.” I finally got on a station here locally. I was on in Charlotte for a different reason to spread how to be happier. It was all about happiness and positivity.
I love your connection to the four minutes because there’s proof. When we spend four minutes of goodness and positivity, it rewards us. How do we do that? What can we do? Are there questions we get asked ourselves, or maybe you encourage people to go to a certain website, or do you have materials in the work you’re doing?
The first thing I want to remind people is that it’s not a character flaw to be attracted to or to pay attention to the negative noise. I’ve interviewed many neuroscientists and people that would know this, but it seems we haven’t had an upgrade between our ears in 35,000 years. That’s it. Our amygdala, the fight-or-flight part of our brain, is in charge 100% of the time, even when you’re sleeping. Your amygdala is on guard.
That is how our brains are wired. All the internet and the news is doing is taking advantage of that. That’s all it’s doing. There’s nothing to stop us each from trying to be our own best human 2.0. We can pay attention to the amygdala. Maybe when we’re standing in line at the movie theater and there’s this creepy guy behind us, he’s looking sideways at our thirteen-year-old daughter. That’s the time to pay attention to your amygdala and make sure you know where he’s at when you leave the theater.
There are still times when we need those defenses. By and large, there are no saber-toothed tigers jumping around corners at us. I always first start with that when I talk to people about how you start finding and living a life full of more possibility. There’s your word in positivity and my word. You say, “I have the hardware and software up here as it was back in the caveman days. How do I live human 2.0?”
That is by also pausing. If you can pause for two seconds and something strikes you the wrong way. It takes two seconds to shift up to this part of our brain, the newest part, where we can think long term, be less judgmental, and recognize our biases and have a little self-awareness. It happens here and you’ve got to pause when something strikes you badly. If you can do that, you can shift up to the part of your brain that has access to see all the landscape in front of us. Not just the dangerous part and the scary part. All of it, which also includes a lot of possibilities, like you talk about all the time.
It opens up our emotions, too. We can’t have bits and pieces of our emotions to experience the most. I don’t know what you think or what you think of the word happiness, how you think about that, or how you define it. I know you have a book that’s called Happiness is an Option.
I’m in the process of rewriting it because of the website where we have thousands of good news articles and I’d be remiss not to tell people, go there. It’s free. We’ve written thousands of articles about what’s right with the world there. In every category, not just puppies and mailbox stuff, but real science and important leaps in human potential. All at the Goodness Exchange. I’d have to say that what we need to do is follow those impulses instead of our emotions over a cliff.
That’s what’s happening when something strikes us the wrong way. Can I give you a story? During the heart of the pandemic, I had patients dying. I lost four family members in six months. Not to COVID but to related things that wouldn’t have happened to them had COVID not been in full swing because we’re connected with thousands of people’s lives. We knew all their stories about how COVID was affecting their lives. One day, I’m driving down the road in our little Vermont town. There was a young man sitting on the corner by the stoplight with a giant poster that says, “COVID is a fake.” Sitting there long-term with this giant poster.
I have the same knee-jerk, contemptuous, and not-nice reaction in my amygdala that everybody would, but what I’ve worked hard to do is to pause for two seconds to learn to get that. It’s like a muscle. It’s not easy at first. I carry around a lawn chair in my car all the time because I love to talk to strangers. If somebody’s doing something interesting, I always have this funny little chair in the back of my car and I’ll just whip over and go talk to them. I said, “For God’s sake, I’m going to do that with this kid.” Even though I was as mad as I was. I live by the statement, “Change contempt to curiosity.” That’s it. I know you have a very similar statement, which I loved.
When you get furious, get curious.
I love it. It’s just so great. I was feeling contempt. I’d get out of my car. I’d make sure I’m upwind of him in case he has to go because he doesn’t believe in it. He’s not going to care if he gives me it. I sat down and he started talking to me. We had the loveliest conversation and I was non-judgmental. I was vulnerable first. We can talk about all those things. How do you establish quick connections? Being a Dentist, that’s relationship-borne like my husband and I. We have to learn to connect deeply with people and get their trust and go through hard things together in 30 seconds.
I used that same impulse to love this person before I hated him and to be curious. We had the nicest conversation I can’t even tell you. It was so enlightening how he came to be sitting there on that corner. There was sadness in that story, as you would imagine. Accident of birth was part of it, too. Can we blame others for the folks that raised them and how they turned out? It’s hard.
Anyway, that’s what I mean by seeking something different. I have the four shifts that I talk to people about. As a part of the four shifts, the fourth one is to seek signs of goodness and progress. If you do that, you will find them. I’m like a broken record on that. I hope your audience doesn’t take away anything else. It’s just to seek signs of goodness and progress.
Seek signs of goodness and progress. Share on XReinforcement is a good thing. That’s how we start to build a different habit about how we get better at things. I love how you’re reinforcing, too, that you said, “You practice the pause, and you talked earlier about the things we put in our minds can come to fruition.” If you were like, “This person is this or that,” and you walked away, that’s what you would have believed and you would have told that story on and on. Other people would have said, “I can’t believe it,” or they would have gone to see it for themselves.
You chose to stop and say, “I want to rewire this journey.” You took a minute. As you said, you got to get curious. It’s just funny, we had to reorder your thinking because initially, your emotions jumped in first versus saying, “I need to understand more,” then having an emotional reaction. Your emotions changed after you got to know more about this person’s story. That one switch of order and look what happened.
The other thing it does is it gives you the opportunity to clear your heart and live with more grace. I didn’t think that this would happen, but what happened was every single other person I ever ran into for two years who was a non-COVID believer or who said something harsh that didn’t jive with my reality of seeing all these people losing loved ones, not being able to go to their deathbeds or their funerals, all the things that we saw by being connected with 3,000 people’s lives.
It helped me not walk around with harshness in my heart because I could say, “I knew that one guy’s story. Maybe his story is something like that or maybe her story is something like that, too.” It helped me not walk around with harshness in my heart to learn at least one story that put some of the pieces of the puzzle that I didn’t understand together.
That is curiosity. I think about that as like open-minded curiosity. You’re willing to take a look at it differently and check your perspectives on it and reorient yourself. It’s so powerful because you talk about differences. How we value that. What could that look like for us? How we could change, how we could grow, and how we could discover. Again, you’re doing that in practice. It’s like music, the way you’re going about this. This is how you’re living your life. You have a chair you put down. I’ve never heard that about you. That’s hilarious.
I always drive around with it in my car. I’ve done that so many times now. I’m constantly rewarded by reaching out to strangers. If it’s somebody sitting there in a lawn chair, I can certainly pull out my own lawn chair and sit down with them. I don’t do it weirdly and I don’t take chances. I don’t pull over and talk to somebody who’s hitchhiking. If it’s something I don’t understand.
Do you ever videotape those? Do you ever do a video clip at the end?
No, most people are pretty suspicious of it. I have to tell you that young guy, he kept saying, “Are you recording this? What’s your agenda?”
How do you enter into that dialogue if someone was courageous enough to follow in your footsteps?
Don’t forget, I was complimenting him. I said, “No, I think it’s pretty courageous to do what you’re doing, to make a poster and sit down on the side of the road. Some people are honking at you and some people are giving you the finger. I want to understand that. Where do you get your strength?” I asked him things like that, too. I was curious about seeing the positive parts of what he’s doing and not focusing on the negative part, how brave it was, or his personal conviction was so strong. What if he applied that to something cool? There’s potential in this young guy who’s only nineteen years old. None of us want to be judged by our nineteen-year-old selves, do we?
No. Definitely made a ripple moment there. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but there’s something good likely to happen. It’s about how we show up for people. Funny enough, I was sitting with my daughter. She was planning to take her permit test, which she did. One of the things in the permit book, the prep book, basically said, “When you’re waving to somebody, make sure you’re using all fingers.” That was so funny.
We were both laughing. The fact that we got to tell society to make sure when you’re waving to somebody, you’re using your whole hand and fingers. Anyway, sorry to get distracted on that. We had to slow it down to teach ourselves to say, “What does good look like?” There is so much divisiveness.
That’s why I say you’re a breath of fresh air. You’re helping us to slow it down using that pause technique. I know that’s one of your speaking topics. I was going to ask you about that, so I appreciate you bringing that up. You also mentioned a bit around the negativity in general in the world with online and what people are arguing about.
I think you have a TED Talk that might be thinking about that area. I know you had a TED Talk during COVID. If you don’t mind giving us a little bit more about that without giving away the whole show because I know we’re going to get our readers to go read both of those. One in the big great scenery you have in the background, then the one that’s going to be coming up in Chicago.
It was hilarious. Before we get off the pause subject, I am going to tell you that. A TED talk I did for a big company in India. The poor guy who owned the TED license got COVID two weeks after I recorded this thing for them, then his mother died. It went through his whole entire family. His mother died, this, that, and the other. It was a nightmare because COVID had a pretty rough time.
India had a pretty rough time. It never got even the slightest light of day published. It’s called the Power of the Pause. If folks want to read something 12 minutes long or 13, it’s my textbook on how and why we’ve got to learn to get that two seconds in the minute our emotions peak. It’s good if we can do it when they’re over-the-top high, too. Not just the lows. Not just the anger, but the highs because it’s the swings that affect us all so badly. The Power of the Pause is what I would recommend for people sitting there in the darkness. All you have to do is look at my name and The Power of the Pause.
We’ll drop that for folks that want to take a look at that.
It’s a very useful technique. I share three things that I do in these moments where I’m challenged to be my most graceful. The TED Talk that I’m most known for, and I worked very hard to bring together everything I’d learned after thirteen years of writing what’s right with the world, is called Exposing the Conspiracy of Goodness.
Back to that little sentence I said earlier about there being this enormous wave of goodness and progress happening in the world. It was happening during and right before the pandemic and where we were all teed up. I was going to be the closing speaker at the second oldest TEDx conference in the country, TEDx Naperville it’s called. It’s amazing creator. He’s the guy I meet on Thursdays, the owner of that Ted license, Arthur Zards. What a creative guy.
You’re surrounding yourself with positive people. Somebody else that’s pretty profound, creative, and connected to the world.
We go crazy for one hour each week. We think crazy thoughts and crazy what-ifs. We reverse everything and turn everything on its side. He’s such a great fellow. We became friends after this ordeal because producing a TED Talk by yourself in your cow pasture, learning video equipment and all that during the middle of the pandemic was quite a big challenge. What happened was he’s such an optimist.
I’m sorry. You shared a lot of wonderful things in that talk. We’ll make sure we link that too for folks.
You’ll see a cow pasture here on our farm in Vermont. That’s where we produced it. One of the takes I had stepped into a giant cow pie right before I climbed upon the rock to start filming. We have pictures of Chuck scraping the cow poo off my shoe. That’s good. It’s called Exposing the Conspiracy Goodness. The four shifts are in there. These are four little simple quick things you can do to see more positive aspects in life that’s in there and some good tips about how to think about the negative news and how to put it in a different place.
Are you going to continue that again in your talk in November?
In November, he’s asked me to come back and do that same talk on the TED stage. On November 9th, we’ll get a version of that talk with the normal surroundings.
I wish I had a front row seat. I’m going to watch you when it comes out. Looking forward to that. You’re going to light up the stage as you shine the light on many things.
I tell you, it’s back to the catcher’s mitts. I feel like that everything that I share, I’m sharing. I didn’t come up with it. I was either a fast catch. It’s an idea that somebody said something and it connected with another idea that somebody else said. I feel like through that whole talk, I’m sharing what others in the world have taught me.
Choosing Positivity
How can we teach people to have their catchers mitt up? Is there a couple of quick techniques where we can get our antennas up to hear those things?
I’ll give you a couple that I do. Have you ever been involved in a conversation, whether it’s somebody you meet in the grocery store or maybe a Zoom meeting, that you regret? When you’re standing there and you’re going, “I’m never going to get out of this conversation,” or whatever? I’ll give you another story. In my dentistry days, we had to identify ahead of time who were the patients that liked to talk a lot because it was their outing.
Older folks who come to the dentist, it’s their outing. They’re all dressed up and it’s great. I love it, too. We had to make sure that I’m not needed in three other rooms before I go into Mrs. McGilligan’s room. I go in and see this little medicine bottle with something that looks like a rock in it on the tray. My hygienist says, “Dr. Lynda, Mrs. McGilligan wants to tell you all about her gallbladder surgery.” I’m running behind and haven’t planned this.
It came to me. I took that thing out and we had these little intraoral cameras we use in people’s mouths for seventeen years. I’m handy with an intraoral camera. It has a magnifier lens on it. I said, “This is such a privilege.” I took the little gallstone and we put the magnifier on it. It looked like the surface of the moon. We had it up on the big screen on the TV.
We talked all about that for a minute, then I dove into her mouth and I was out. Sometimes, you have to be okay with the moment and find the magic in it. This is what I do. When I’m in those conversations or I’m starting in one that I already know, “This could be bad and boring,” I’ll say, “No. What am I supposed to get out of this?” That person will always say something I needed to hear. A hundred percent of the time that happens to me.
You’re looking for it again. You’re setting yourself up. There’s something there that’s beneficial and good.
You make a magic moment out of it by saying, “Give me that gallstone. Let’s look at it up close.”
That’s a great story. Is that how you brought back some of the positivity back to your patients?
We have a natural inclination. My husband and I have both. As you may pick up, there are a lot of people who do a lot of good in the world who’ve had a childhood tragedy. My husband and I both had horrendous childhood tragedies when we were 13 to 15 years old. That’s a funny age to have something dreadful happen.
When you have something like that happen at a young age, it can either horribly disable your worldview or it can send you on a great search for something to celebrate. My husband and I became good at finding something to celebrate with every single patient. That made us do it in our own lives then it became the way we see the world. The way we are in the world. We find something to celebrate in even the most dreadful moments. That’s a good trick too.
You’re looking for the silver lining, the positive, and the learning. How would you describe it?
Trying to think of this name, there’s a fabulous Ted talk by a monk. He says something like, a paraphrase, but he says, “In every moment, there may not be something to be happy about, but there is something to be grateful for in every moment.” That one hit me. That’s one of the very earliest TED Talks. I’ll think about that and I’ll give it to you because it’s a very important talk.
I learned to always do that, to find something to be grateful for. If my patient’s life is dreadful and falling apart at the seams, I can find something to be grateful for in there and say, “Blah, blah, blah.” Once you get used to doing that, your brain just starts to. Again, it’s a practice, like just pulling it together and saying, “What am I going to hear from this great person’s conversation? This one. This is another trick.” Looking around you and saying, “In this moment, what is there to be grateful for or happy about?” You can always find it.
You’re rewiring the path again. You’re just taking sidesteps and circling back. It’s not like you’re ignoring it. It’s still there. It’s not toxic positivity. It’s a path of I could choose to be miserable and down and out. Let this sack me, or I could try to address it and get something out of it so I can move forward.
I’ll give you another example. In a business meeting, when something is gone wrong. Let’s say, you’re part of a nurse’s staff and you’re in a meeting with doctors and nurses. It’s a big staff meeting and something’s gone horribly wrong and you’re there to process it. Everybody is telling one negative thing after another about the other person or somebody else’s fault. Whatever the situation. Be the person who finds possibility in the room.
Is it possible that the person we’re talking about, that we didn’t communicate what we wanted from them? Is it possible that they were interrupted by something that we don’t even have any idea it happened that may have been more important than what we were focusing on? In the darkest rooms, be the person who’s carrying a lantern for a possibility.
It’s a great message. I support that. As you know, we’re Live Your Possible show. I believe there’s a wonderful light inside of everybody, as you know, as we talked about on your show. When we start to believe that, to your point, it’s amazing what shows up.
If you go along with that conversation in a business meeting about how crappy everybody is or how much bad intention they all have, where’s that going anyway? No problem ever got fixed through that machination.
I agree. One of my favorite guests on this show is Mindi Cox. She should be on yours. She leads with love in any interaction. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t have direct conversations. She’s respectful, and she commands the best. People appreciate it more than you ever know because they feel like they’re cared for. Mindi’s being genuine, and she’s being direct. There are no surprises because it’s already clear what the expectations are. There’s care and love in the room.
If people are letting each other down, there’s room to make it right first and to move it forward. She’s let me lead a little bit more with love. I share that and let people know that. Some people will say to me, “You got to be harder on people.” I’m like, “I could be direct. I could help people move forward and have success and do what’s possible.” I love how you keep bringing that back, what is possible is extending some grace to other people.
Sometimes it is a matter of assuming good intentions. One of my guests taught me this one, always assume good intentions and you’ll be wrong sometimes. People will take advantage of you, but the amount of times that that will happen is so minuscule compared to the amount of times when you assume the best intentions. The most amazing things happen. You can’t protect yourself from the 5% of times people will take advantage of you.
How about opening up to the 95% of times that when you believe somebody has good intentions and you poke around on the edges till you find what it is? My brother’s a good example of that. I don’t see anything like each other politically. I irritate the heck out of him. I’m very middle of the road, so that shows you how far he is. Anyway, he’s the first guy. When COVID hit, he was organizing with his neighbors to make masks for the local hospitals.
He’s an airline pilot. He’s as clever as heck. On 9-11, he would have done something interesting to make a change in the outcome. He’s so smart. Yet, it would be easy for me to brush away all of his amazing qualities for the one thing that makes me crazy and gnash my teeth about him. We’ve got to get so that we see all of the other person, not just the part that makes us crazy. It’s work.
It’s beautiful work, though. That’s the difference. I think that’s the difference when people say, “How are you always thinking about that happiness or good stuff or seeing possibilities?” It’s just that, what you said. It’s giving others a chance. Seeing people’s full selves. People have stories, like you’ve shared some of the traumatic moments with me off air. There are moments, we got to grow from them, then we decide what we do differently.
You’ve chosen the path of goodness. I’m grateful for that and how you approach that, how you’re learning. You’re seeking out why, what, and how. You’re bringing that back in the world. You created a positive media company. How did you get to that point where you started seeing it? I understand you went through those moments, but what did you do after that? What are the steps you took?
I was trying to look for some other narrative. I’ll just share this much. When I was fifteen, my best friend’s family was all murdered in a very bad way. When that happens to you at fifteen, there was not a lot of supportive anything back then. My dad was the town doctor, so I got as much support as anybody could possibly get from a professional point of view. It wasn’t anything.
I started on a journey. When those things happen to any young, as I mentioned, you either become a tragic story yourself or you fight your way out into some light. I started reading every bit of philosophy I could get my hands on. I studied religions. I did Voltaire and Mark Twain and all the great philosophers. Little nuggets here and there. When you’re 19, 20, or 21 years old, who knows how you’re picking up on things?
You either become a tragic story yourself, or you fight your way out into the light. Share on XYou become a bigger reader and a world traveler. My husband and I have lived all over the world and dragged our kids to God forsaken places. We were then even looking for the beauty and the wonder always in places and always saw it. It builds like that until you become this big ball of, “The world’s cool.” When you start seeing your patients suffering, like we did for a few years, I saw some science on that. It turns out, in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, the science on people’s attitudes. It’s a downward spiral. People’s hope in the future. It’s scientifically documented that it went down strategically.
Finally, the morning happened, at 6:30 AM one morning. I kept saying, “Somebody’s got to do something about this,” when I would see patients that I thought were chipper, and they’d be all bummed. They were saying they were giving their kids advice like, “Don’t go to college because you never know. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket. Better to just make all the money you can.”
People that weren’t short-sighted were suddenly pulling back because of fear. One day, we woke up to our alarm clock NPR. It was November 13th, 2013. Our alarm clock woke us up at 6:30 AM in the middle of a beheading story. I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, “What?” That’s it. I said, “That’s it.” I’m going to go on this giant search and try and find someplace in the universe of the internet that’s doing good news with no politics and no ads.
That’s the other thing that we haven’t talked about. There’s an agenda behind almost every single thing you find on the internet. When I searched for two weeks for someplace where I could get positive news with no agenda and no politics, I finally started doing it myself. As I said, I started the Goodness Exchange.
When my daughter graduated from college, she graduated from Harvard in 2015, she joined me. We were like two zinus women pointing to what’s right with the world as fast as we could. I’ve supported that website. All that it’s done single-handedly all these years because I didn’t want to get anybody’s bias.
I could have probably taken on an angel investor or three or a corporate sponsor or something. It felt like I wanted to give back to the world the good fortune that I found. I made it work in our budget. The thing didn’t have to be tainted by any other agenda except what it was built to do, which was give people some faith in the future and each other.
You are a gift to the world. Thank you.
I feel like I don’t have a choice to do what I do every day. I bet you, you’re the same way. I’ve talked to so many thought leaders on this show. Once you feel the benefit of having a positive worldview and the connection to others and the joy that we can bring each other, it’s impossible to stop. Am I right? It’s impossible.
It’s one of those things. You want people to see it and feel it as well. It’s hard when people are not there and we have to keep moving forward to help. People have to experience it themselves to understand it’s not only possible. It’s every day and it could be often throughout the day because if we’re helping people, they see it. They light up. It’s a ripple effect. It’s quite amazing. It’s truly a level of transcendence that it’s hard to explain.
I believe that every single one of us has something that we’re uniquely built to contribute. This is the thing. It doesn’t have to be anything that looks like what you and I are doing, or Matthew Lee who’s in charge of Harvard’s Center for Human Flourishing. That’s a guy. It doesn’t have to be anything big like that. It can be something little like every day checking in on an elderly neighbor.
It can be seeing that your town has a gardening problem and doing it yourself for the heck of it. It can be now taking care of a neighbor kid whose parents aren’t there after school. There’s something in each of us that we’re uniquely built to contribute. It’s important at least the journey to start looking for that.
There’s opportunity everywhere wherever people are, to your point. At the end of the day, we all come from different places. We go down different paths. Yet, there’s a commonality that’s super connected. It’s interconnected when we think about the joy and the love we have as a human race and the journey that you’re on. I remember reading somewhere about your parents or caretakers themselves. They serve humanity and you’re carrying that forward, which is beautiful. You’re showing us that humanity does exist.
Isn’t that like the free thing, the easy thing, and the most obvious thing that each of us can do every day? Open somebody’s car door if they’re juggling their five grocery bags, or put the cart back, or run it up to the girl who’s pushing 25 carts and putting it right at the front end. There are a million small things that we can do each day that make a difference in the way the next person operates. It’s just so easy. You got to get out of your habits. Decide to look for a different world than the one you’ve been seeing because it’s all there. That’s a whole other thing. There are 8.7 billion definitions of reality now. Might as well go with it and choose our reality.
All of it comes back to where we are and what connects with each of us. People have heard this from me, and what you’re saying is that we got to connect with that and start somewhere. You said habits, it’s funny. As you’re saying the word habits, I’m thinking of the book called The Power of Habit, and the nature of changing a habit or at least expanding or adding a habit is that element of what you’re saying.
Try something and feel good about it. Maybe you’ll get some feedback or you’ll see there’s some level of gift that comes back to you because there’s so much research about helping and serving others and how it extends our ability to look at life differently. It slows us down. It’s another form of pause. It’s a proven gift where it slows us down to notice what’s happening because when we notice what’s happening, we truly stay present. That’s a gift, and I think just slowing down to do that. It’s going to keep repeating itself and then we’re going to want to do more. That’s the habit you and I are in. It’s not just a habit. It’s now our ritual. It’s spiritual in nature.
I know people understand that there is this level of this next level. That’s what I feel like this is. We start to slow down and see what’s truly there. There’s the beauty and the possibilities. You sit down with people when you take out your chair and ask more to understand where that beauty is but you do it. You take the steps and that’s what people can do. Whatever that is in their part of the world.
Stepping Outside Comfort Zone
Let’s talk about something that you talk about a lot because it’s super important. Maybe the most important thing that you talk about is getting comfortable outside your comfort zone. I’ll give you an example. I used to say that I hated driving. Anything over two hours, I was out. I hated driving then we had a big calamity on the family farm back in Illinois. It’s a nineteen-hour drive and I had to drive back and forth.
My mom was driving for a long time and other things on the family farm. I couldn’t afford to jump on an airplane all the time. I got to doing that drive. I can’t wait for the next nineteen-hour drive I have. I discovered books on tape, biographies in particular read by the author. If anybody wants to get into something, it’s incredible to listen to an author. It’s just incredible. It feels like they’re sitting in a seat beside you for nineteen hours telling you their story.
Since I love people’s stories, it’s so beautiful. What I’m saying is, as long as I was telling myself all those years that I hated driving, I was leaving this part of my now such enjoyable life experience. I was leaving it on the table. It was gold left on the table as long as I was telling myself that story over and over again and never challenging my comfort zone on it. I picked the best book ever on my first nineteen-hour drive, and I drove it straight through. I was going to stop and break it in two and I didn’t. I left at 5:00 AM and got there at midnight or something.
That’s funny how we get locked in. I got to listen to that as well. That’s great, and I love that expansion. To your point, that’s where growth came from for me, as you know. When I figured out that I needed to not have all the answers and needed to get uncomfortable with knowing that differences were strengths and opportunities to discover the world in a whole different way. People, the beauty, and the love in the world, that’s when things became the moment of change for me.
I drew a picture as we’re talking. It’s this little dot. You take one step and you go out further. It’s expansive, allowing yourself to welcome in the world and see a little bit differently. The beauty about this is when you look at it, it’s a ripple effect depending on what you define in between. When you get out to the end, I asked my kids this when I showed them this drawing. I said, “What does this look like?” They said, “It’s a big one-eyed smile,” which is the logo on the show.
My son said, “Dad, when you go out to the end, you have this big smile at the end.” The further you go out and expand yourself, you’re going to have more joy and happiness in the world. I asked them these questions, and they’re like, “This is what it looks like to me.” They said, “Dad, this is like a big radar.” It’s like a radar where, as you said earlier, you have the catcher’s mitts up.
You have the radar, you’re willing to expand and move out in the world. That is it. That’s the beauty. It’s everything you were saying. You and I are on the same page. That’s why I was so excited to talk about what you’re doing and what’s possible. We came at this from different places. Many other humans are doing that too, and many more can.
It’s examining your limiting beliefs. I can give you a thousand examples. Almost every two weeks, I say, “I can’t believe I thought that way. It was two weeks ago.” Now, like, here’s a proposition. What if we all celebrated being wrong? Here’s what this work has taught me in many years. I love to be wrong. It’s my favorite state of being, to be wrong. Think about this.
If I thought, for instance, I interviewed this guy, Chris Brown. He has the most incredible voice I’ve ever heard. It’s like Barry White from the ‘70s mixed with Darth Vader. He’s the deepest, velvety voice but more velvety than that. He has a life. He’s been incarcerated and homeless. Now, he’s a voiceover guy, but his story is shocking.
I had to be willing to listen to somebody who’s been incarcerated, homeless, care about their opinion, and find them fascinating before I could ever be at that level because it’s so easy to judge. What if we all looked at our limiting beliefs and tried to think about how limiting they are? They’re limiting us from hearing the stories and perspectives of others that cause us to leap to the next way of thinking. That’s what being wrong is to me.
When I realized how wrong I was, I’m like, “Ugh.” I feel like I’m on a new planet like your ripple drawing. Every time you’re wrong, you get to hop out there to one of those ripples. You take some thought to articulate this so you didn’t get in trouble with it. If there was one thing that I could change in the world, I think it would be a badge of courage to celebrate being wrong for people and for all of us to not mean it was vulnerability to be wrong. It means it was courage and wonder to admit that you’re wrong. “Think what that would change in politics and business and how we raise our children and thing.” If it was a prize to be able to say, “I was so wrong. Now, here’s how I think.”
That’s incredible. You are talking about the catcher’s mitt again. You’re allowing yourself to hear it differently and taking these perspectives to a whole different place and your willingness to be wrong. Looking at this as a learning journey, how do we get better from it? How do we discover? That is where the amazing stuff happens.
It’s always where the amazing stuff happens. I’ve got another story for you.
When I first started on this journey, I was all full of myself. I was this big, like, “That’s it.” I was telling everybody because of the NPR story with the beheading. My first three years at this, I was saying, “That’s it. We all need to just turn off the negative news. If they’re not going to tell us anything good, let’s turn it off.” That hits them right where they live. My son went off to college and he was playing basketball at Wesleyan down in your neck of the woods.
The first football game, we got to meet all the parents of all the players. Dom and I walk in there and I start talking to the African-American woman who’s super right and super nice. All about the negative news. I was going on and on about the negative news. She was very interested and encouraging, then when I gave her a half a minute, she says, “Can I approve your way of thinking?” I like to be wrong, I said, “Of course.”
She was one of the top five editors of NPR, of all of the NPR. She’s the only African-American female editor of the Chicago Tribune. Her husband likes to say, “There’s this long hallway at the Chicago Tribune, and it’s the editors, old white guy, then old white guy with a beard, then there’s…” I’m not going to say her name.
I could not believe it. She said, “Can I improve your way of thinking? I’m an editor at NPR.” I later went up and looked. She is the editor. Anyway, she told me so many great things about what would have happened in our world if journalists hadn’t been putting their lives on the line to expose stories like Watergate and Worse, and how much bravery It took 50 years ago during the Civil Rights movement to report on anything. She gave me quite twenty minutes, and I changed my tune. I never said that to anyone again.
I never forgot her statement, “Can I improve your way of thinking?” That’s a tip I’d love to tell everybody. In our office, in the dental office, that has been the number one, how do we get along? One of the questions on your pre-list was, what does joy look like at work? You haven’t asked me yet, but what I was going to tell you is joy at work looks like when people are constantly open to other people improving their way of thinking and they ask for it.
My staff now, Aaron, my COO. He will go up to somebody and say, “I was thinking about spending the afternoon working on a spreadsheet for this, that, and the other. Improve my way of thinking on that.” The person will always say something to her that changes her entire plan that’s positive, good, and thank God she asked or she would have wasted her afternoon. How about the second thing, if I could wave a magic wand? Besides everybody liking to be wrong. If people had an attitude that almost everyone could improve their way of thinking. What would that world look like?
Imagine a world where people believed almost everyone could improve their thinking. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Share on XIt’s establishing the language that makes us safe for us to step into that level of conversation or wonder what could be. Thank you for that. Dr. Lynda, anything else you’d like to share with our audience before we sign off because this has been wonderful?
I think I’ve run on quite a lot.
Closing
I have to say, I could talk with you all day. As I said, you’re a breath of fresh air. You’ve given us a lot of tips and great ideas. We’re going to share folks your website, how to reach you, how to connect with you, and stay in touch to make sure we’re following up on your TEDx, which you’re going to crush it. I’m so honored to be a friend of yours and had a blast on your show, which I know will be out by the time this is launched. I love what you’re doing and I admire what you’re doing. Thank you so much.
Let me tell people what day. Your June 16th is when we publish your show. I’m telling you, I did the editing with my producer. It is magnificent. It’s one of my favorites. You nailed it. You share so many things that are so important. Thank you so much for doing what you do in the world. Can I leave people with one more little gift?
Please.
There’s a TED Talk that I think is one of the most important ones that anybody who loves your work or mine would love. It’s by a natural photographer named DeWitt Jones. Look up the TED Talk by DeWitt Jones called Celebrate What’s Right with the World. It’s funny and beautiful. It will change and help you see a little bit more what I’m saying when I say, celebrate what’s right with the world and go seek it out.
You are a gift. Thanks for all the treasures. Thanks again, and great to see you.
Have a great day.
